The Presuppositions of Soft Triggers are Obligatory Scalar Implicatures
نویسنده
چکیده
Presupposition triggers can be divided in two groups, ‘soft’ and ‘hard,’ based on whether the presuppositions they give rise to are easily defeasible and whether they project uniformly in quantificational sentences (Abusch 2002, 2010, Charlow 2009). Recently, two ideas have been put forward in the literature in connection to this problem. First, soft triggers should be thought of as non-presuppositional items associated with lexical alternatives (Abusch 2002, 2010). Second, the projection behavior of presuppositions can be accounted for by a theory based on scalar implicatures (Chemla 2009a, Chemla 2010). In this paper, building on these two ideas, I propose a scalar approach to the presuppositions of soft triggers. The contribution of the proposal is twofold. First, I propose a theory of soft presuppositions as scalar implicatures that provides an account of their behaviour in quantificational sentences that makes more accurate predictions than Chemla’s (2009a), Chemla’s (2010) and Abusch’s (2010) proposals and other non-alternative-based theories that I am aware of. Second, I develop an account of the differences between soft and hard presuppositions, on the one hand, and the similarities between soft presuppositions and scalar implicatures, on the other. Finally, the proposed approach also reduces the pattern of presupposition suspension to independent principles needed in the theory of scalar implicatures.
منابع مشابه
A scalar implicature-based approach to Neg-raising
In this paper, I give an analysis of neg-raising inferences as scalar implicatures. The main motivation for this account as opposed to a presupposition-based approach (Bartsch 1973 and Gajewski 2005, 2007) comes from the differences between presuppositions and neg-raising inferences, noticed by Gajewski (2005, 2007) and Homer (2012). In response to this issue, Gajewski (2007) argues that neg-ra...
متن کاملQuantifier Acquisition: Presuppositions of “every”
Three components of determiner meanings – truth conditions, implicatures, and presuppositions – have been identified. One of the major findings in acquisition, related to the truth conditions of the quantifiers, has been that children go through at least two stages of non-adult interpretation of the quantifier every (Philip, 1995). More recently, researchers (Noveck, 2001; Gualmini et al., 2001...
متن کاملProjecting Presuppositions with Scalar Implicatures
I present a system which reconciles free choice permission effect with other scalar implicatures. The core idea is to cluster together alternatives which are obtained by similar transformations of the original sentence (e.g., replacement of a given item with a stronger item). Interestingly, this system can be extended to account for presupposition projection.
متن کاملMeaning components in the constitution of Russian verbs: Presuppositions or implicatures?
In this paper we discuss the inferences triggered by perfective accomplishments and two verbal prefixes (the completive prefix doand the iterative prefix pere-) in Russian. Contrary to most works that attempt to analyze these inferences as presuppositions, we show that there is no ground for such a claim and argue that the inferences discussed here are better analyzed in terms of entailments an...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- J. Semantics
دوره 32 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2015